


Your new hands

by Akrois



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: I still don't have a beta, I wanted to write something fluffy and it became angsty, M/M, POV Second Person, Pre-Slash, hand-holding in public?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22478761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akrois/pseuds/Akrois
Summary: You worried your skin would feel fake and plastic-y, that he would somehow understand everything just by touching you.You worry so much about so many things.
Relationships: Sidestep/Steel (Fallen Hero)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	Your new hands

**Author's Note:**

> There was this poem I loved and I can't find it in english but it was this one by Sandro Penna  
> Un bicchiere di latte ed una piazza  
> col monumento. Un bicchiere di latte  
> dalle tue dolci sporche nuove mani.
> 
> And the last line is "your sweet stained new hands" and I think about it way too often

You should be doing so much.

You have plans to draw, people to meet, people to blackmail, people to _**fight**_!

You also have to rework your plans to involve fewer people, because people still somehow give you headaches. Not event telepath-grade headaches, just the mild sting caused by having to deal with them for too long.

Take Chen, for example. Number two biggest source of headaches in your life, now placidly sitting next to you.

Watching dogs.

 _Dog_ -watching.

Man, you're funny.

You turn around to check if Chen is laughing, but you realize that the joke was only in your head and Chen can't read your mind, even if he tries. Is a joke really funny if you're the only one who thinks it's funny? Maybe? You should tell Chen the joke. Maybe he will have a good laugh at it.

You scuttle closer, getting all ready to deliver your joke, when you notice that your hand is touching his.

Not even your whole hand, just the tip of your index and ring finger. They sit on top of his hand and Chen is too engrossed with Spoon (or has too little sensitivity in his hand) to notice it.

You've touched his hand before.

You used to high-five yourself with his hand every time he threw it at you, which happened more often than he will ever admit (he'd done it 23 times, you counted).

It feels different from his old one. The new skin-mesh is rougher and feels more like an exaggeration of the idea of human skin than actual skin. Like someone who had a vague idea of what skin should feel like was tasked with making a tougher version of it.

It still feels more natural than his old, plastic-y ones, but it still doesn't feel _natural_.

You wonder if he has other hands that look and feel more human. He used to, once.

But what would be the point in them now, with his whole arm being a prosthetic? It would clash and look mismatched. Like he had been stitched together and then someone remembered that he was supposed to look human only when the job was half done.

You distractedly turn his hand in yours, pressing your thumb where the tendons would gap, feeling the way the skin-mesh barely gives under the pressure.

It's not too different from a human hand you think, folding your other hand and pressing down on your palm for comparison.

It has groves in the mesh that resemble the lines on a palm and it's tougher on the bottom o than it is at the top.

Completely out of curiosity, you squeeze at the bottom of his fingers to see if they will reflexively curl.

They don't and you feel a bit disappointed until you see his hand turn and slide against yours, palm to palm, your fingertips barely reaching his.

You look up and Chen is staring at you, his face full of incredulity and his mind full of... _wonder_?

Wonder?

No. A question.

A query, slipping through the cracks in his mind, suffocated under the rapid-fire of _why_ and _when_ and _how did I not notice this_.

He wonders how your skin feels.

Which is only fair, you spend a good minute wondering what his skin would feel like, so you think you could give him a sample, just to see what he will do.

You don't move your hand from his, but you do turn around and slide your free hand on his wrist, searching a point where there are no scars, no tissue build-up, no barely concealed mods to distract from the feeling of skin on skin.

You look at your hand (it's messed up and scarred) sliding higher and higher, finding a single untouched spot inside of his elbow. You lay your palm there.

Not holding or pressing.

Just there.

Chen suddenly exhales and you mimic him, even if you didn't even know you were holding your breath.

Why where you holding your breath? What were you worried about?

You worried about him moving his arm. About him pulling his hand away. About a refusal, a _no_ unspoken but clear.

You worried your skin would feel fake and plastic-y, that he would somehow understand everything just by touching you.

You worry so much about so many things.

And then you notice that is not only your worry. That he thought about it too

About you moving your hand away, about you recoiling in disgust, about not being human enough for this.

For _this_?

Not even human enough to hold someone's hand? To share warmth under the sun, to sit and enjoy a moment of closeness?

Who spoke to him like this? Who made him believe that there was something in him that could cause disgust and fear?

Oh, you know exactly who, because you know who told you that. Who stares at you in the mirror and counts the reasons why you are unworthy, why you will never know love, why don't deserve to hold someone's hand and share a moment under the sun.

(to be frank, he probably knows of the hundreds of pearl-clutching newspaper articles that use his very existence to question when and how did science go too far, if he's even a human any more. You never really cared for them, but now you wonder if he did.)

You tangle your fingers in his and dare to look up at his face and he's looking at you like you are a whole different person. Like you just offered him something nice after starving for so long.

Like you sat at his table and smiled.

Like you ran in front of him and then disappeared forever, just to come back and hold his hand.

His feelings roll off him and you can't stop yourself from wondering _why_. Why now. Why not before. 

You are an actual threat now, while once you were a threat only in his eyes. You used to be a known variable, something he could plot with, around or against.

But now you are holding his hand and you are warm and soft and he doesn't know what to do with you.

To be fair, neither do you.

Something touches your knee, breaking your train of thought. It's Spoon, looking at you, his body moving side to side together with his wagging tail.

He's _happy_ to see you, even if he's been away for only two minutes.

It makes you want to cry, so you untangle yourself from Chen and reach out for Spoons snout, scratching him under his ears.

You keep your face down and your shields up and you hope, you _**hope**_ that Chen will just not talk, for a moment. Just for a moment.

Chen looks at you in silence.

It makes you sad.

You don't know why,


End file.
